Belize: Day Four

I decided to go snorkeling again this morning, while Doc, Kat, and Brett went diving along with Doug and Nish. The boat ride over was annoying because I ended up sitting next to Tom, while the rest of Tom’s party sat on the other side of the boat. No sooner had he sat down then he immediately turned to me and launched into a story about some friend of his and volcanic sequences and moss and people spending thousands on hotel rooms and the geology bonehead of the year award. Seriously. What the fuck?! And he told the story as if I should know the people he was talking about! I tuned out and just made little “hmm” noises every few minutes or gave vague smiles, while trying to show as little interest as possible. Thank god I had my sunglasses on. When it seemed like his story was possibly winding down (or maybe that was me simply giving up), I gave a final smile and turned to Giovanni, the dive/snorkel master sitting on the other side of me, and began a conversation with him instead. Rude, maybe, but it seems apparent that Tom does not understand social cues such as obvious boredom and discomfort in his “victims.”

The boat dropped us off on South Water Caye and we walked around to the other side of the island. Tom was quite eager to get in the water, so he walked on ahead of the rest of us. The sad part is, the rest of his family was making fun of him behind his back, rolling their eyes and making snide comments. I almost felt sorry for him. At one point he turned around and said (and I quote) “Everyone, please note the sand underneath your feet. Now, you’ll notice that this sand is a slightly finer grade than the sand back on the mainland. This is because…” and he launched into a tour-guide style geologic monologue about the makeup of the sand on the island.

The snorkeling was much better today than it was on Sunday. This may be partially due to the fact that I had brought a bottle of defogger with me, and I could actually see through my mask. My feet were still sore and raw from where the fins rubbed them on Sunday’s trip, but I went ahead and put them on anyway and just gritted my teeth through the pain. Next time I’ll know to bring my diving boots.

We stayed out in the water for quite awhile today, and everything on the reef was crisp, sharp, and colorful. I saw many different kinds of coral – brain coral, fan coral, cactus coral (I don’t know the actual names of most of them, I’m just describing what they look like). I saw a barracuda, a spotted eagle ray, a lobster, tons of fish including blue tangs, yellow parrotfish, scorpionfish (which look like giant mottled ugly lumps of coral until they move), sergeant majors, buttonsnappers, and so many others in all different colors.

It started to rain so we came back to shore (which was good because I’d forgotten to put a new motion sickness medication patch on this morning, and I had just begun to feel a bit queasy) and walked back to the marine biology students’ station (International Zoological Expedition) near the dock. The rain really started in once we got back and didn’t let up for probably 30 minutes. The divers had come back already and were having grapefruit juice and cookies. They went back out in the rain, but we were all so cold standing on IZE’s porch and the rain kept coming down, that we decided not to go back out again. Eventually we walked back to the other side of the island to fetch our gear, and when Tom realized we weren’t going to snorkel again, he pulled a full-on three-year-old temper tantrum. I think he was joking, but I’m not certain. He made blubbering noises and kept pointing at the ocean. Seriously.

On the boat ride back, one of the Canadian women sat next to me before Tom could and whispered, “I’ll protect you this time.” She told me “He’s not from MY side of the family.” Tom announced to the boat captain before we started back that he’d be wanting to stop a few times to videotape the surroundings and dictate to himself into his camera. At least I didn’t have to sit next to him. Poor Giovanni got the brunt of it, and shortly after we started back, he moved over to my side of the boat instead.

The boat had a pretty nice sound system, and the captain and dive masters had an iPod plugged in, playing really loud reggae the whole way back. I guess we were the party boat. We stopped at Bird Island, where all the giant pterodactyl-looking frigate birds and brown- and red-footed boobies roosted. It is a tiny island but it’s completely overgrown with trees and vegetation, and hundreds of birds circle overhead and roost in the trees along the shore.

Back on the mainland, I met Doc (who had come back on the other boat) at the pool, took a shower, then went to lunch. We ate with a fellow diver from a nearby resort, Carol, and her friend Sylvia, a little old lady from Italy, who thought that the bouillabase in Belize sucked. Sylvia kept reaching over and taking food off my plate. It was a very strange lunch.

I took a nap for most of the afternoon, and woke up shortly before we were due to eat dinner (tonight: house salad and a beef “fajita” – barely seasoned beef wrapped in a tortilla with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise – with coconut rice, and fruit crumble cheesecake and coffee. Oh, and lots of wine!). We had a lot of fun at dinner, talking and laughing about all sorts of things, including how Doc and Brett fooled the dive masters into thinking that they were afraid of manatees… which led to ideas for a TV show called “Humanatee” about half man/half manatee Jason Seaworthy and his adventures.

After dinner we played Trivial Pursuit in the lobby, boys against girls. The boys won by the skin of their teeth.